finally my good work is getting some attention

see link.

wow, and christmas

things are great.

today i went out for lunch with patience, poppy, and keren.
i received:

• a holiday bonus ($250) (!)
  
• back pay for my raise ($400) (!)
  
• many headbands
• also a cute fuzzy headband that looks like christmas lights and lights up at the tips.

• a snowman candle and candle holder (ugly variety)
• fancy lunch out at restaurant (portabello burger)
• a fancy pen
• permission to leave early
• an actually nice scarf (black)
• 4 jars of homemade jam (made by keren's hilarious sister, donna, who is currently in the hospital)
• a lot of information about why everyone we work with at the office is terrible and lazy but why we are so great
• christmas socks

i am instructed that i must spend some of the ridiculous amounts of money i just got on clothes. which is fine by me. also the other day i discovered that patience is also harassed about her wardrobe. so. that's awesome. i also discovered the other day that patience and poppy are my friends. either that or i'm losing my mind.

keren was very sweet and has not even brought up the fact that i skipped work on wednesday. here is a picture of my very nice boss, keren.

nsf ,ppf

the title is code for "bad mood." the code is that both of my hands were one space the the right of the correct placement. and the reason for this code is so that you would not be turned off to reading what is sure to be an excellent and enlightening post.

i am in a bad mood because my boss keren is sometimes mean and/or disrespectful.

here is a picture of keren:

you will hear more about keren in parts 2-12 of tara's very popular holiday party blogging extravaganza.

i guess i don't feel like going into detail because it is actually quite stupid and petty, and because i just told kai over gchat.

but i really really do wish that my workplace were not so stupid.

also, i attended aerry (human resource lady) 's baby shower today and i bought her

1. a hanging whats-it-called with danglies... a... shit. mobile. i guess. with a butterfly or other flying bug type thing with wings that crackle
2. baby washcloths, cute variety

i am feeling crabby and also i am probably premenstrual again which leads me to believe that

1. this blog is keeping me better in touch with the various issues of my menstrual cycle and that
2. i hate my menstrual cycle

WAIT!! BREAKING NEWS!! this email LITERALLY just arrived in my inbox, from poppy of course, WHILE i was blogging.
so fresh off the press we have:

Holiday Part: Part I - The Trek

Holiday Party

Part I

The Trek

I left work earlier than usual last Friday so I could get to Megan's holiday party on time. Megan's work was throwing their annual holiday party in a Milwaukee restaurant and I, as "guest," was chafing under the awesome responsibility bestowed upon me. The day before, I had been giddily looking forward to an evening of detached judging, mental note-taking, and free food eating, but as the time of departure approached, I found myself growing anxious about the impression I might make on people. Would I, wearing slacks and a common sweater (but not a sleek holiday dress with matching earrings) deepen Megan's reputation as a lax dresser? Would I falter under the conversational strain of Megan's uber-intense boss, who had apparently "scared" Taya when they interacted in the workplace? As the tension built up in my brain, I realized that my stomach and lower intestines were the body parts actually bearing the brunt of my struggle. Four blocks from my office and one block from the bus stop, I ducked into the enormous Office Depot(c) and took refuge in anonymous restroom time. Fifteen or twenty humiliating minutes later, I darted up the escalator and ran to the bus stop, where, as my fifth sense had correctly detected, the bus to Milwaukee was approaching.

Megan was slated to get on the same bus as me further into the route. Sure enough, only minutes before our stop approached, a fuzzy hat and skirt-clad Megan stepped on board. "So," she asked skeptically, "we're supposed to get off this bus in 3 minutes? Does that seem right to you?" The bus driver, who had already won my heart with her chummy conversation with a cyclist earlier in the ride, soon called out our stop "SE 26th and McGloughlin!" and wished us to "be safe out there."

The bus rolled off. Silence. Our eyes warily scanned the dark forest flanking either side of what appeared to be a busy highway to nowhere. "Oh man," lamented Megan, "is this really our stop?" "Err..uhhh," I concurred, with equally helpless confusion. "Excuse me," Megan said, turning to the teeny bopper to our right, the only other passenger who had chosen to join us in this no man's land. "Do you know where Amadeus Restaurant is from here? We know that it's on 22nd and Sparrow." "Hmm," said the teeny bopper, only half-thinking about the question, but fully sizing-up our sorry predicament, "I don't know where that is, but you shouldn't have gotten off at this stop. There's nothing 'round here." "See that," she said, pointing toward a shadowy cluster of trees and bushes, "that's all residential. There isn't any restaurant 'round here." Megan continued her inquiry, seeking out last ditch specifics. I chimed in with a couple point of clarification questions. "You shouldn't have gotten off at this stop," she scolded again before running past a first lane of traffic. "Gotta check for cross streets; next time check for cross streets!" she shouted back at us maternally and futilely as she disappeared into the night. "If there isn't anything out here, then where the hell did she go?" I wondered aloud. We gazed into the blank night. "That's a good point," answered Megan.

Our disapproving guide had pointed us in a plausibly correct direction; the otherwise worthless Tri-Met printout had instructed us to go west. Unfortunately, thirty seconds after our fellow bus rider had vanished into thin air, Megan and I were disagreeing on where exactly the girl had been pointing when she was saying which way west was (Ed. Note: Megan turned out to be 100% correct). We took Megan's route, and after treking past a bus stop for the bus we had just been on, we approached a lit intersection.

Our first task was to run across the street to the 7-11, where the employee inside revealed that he couldn't tell us which way to go because he wasn't from around here. Thankfully, he didn't keep trying to help us find our way for too long after that crucial piece of information about his shoddy location-finding qualifications had been revealed. We were starting to get worried about being too late for the party. The time "6:00 p.m." had been engraved on the email dinner invitations, but Megan had discovered through passive eaves-dropping in her office breakroom that arriving this early would result in a lengthy, awkward waiting period. But now, we feared that "fashionably late" would turn into "shamefully tardy."

We did know that, at a minimum, we had to get from 26th to 22nd street. After some hope-filled scurrying, we found that the street above 26th was 27th Place and the street below was 27th Avenue. "Nooooo!" I cried out at our Hitchcockian dillemma. But Megan, overcoming the pain in her high-heeled feet, charged us in a direction that turned out to be westward. Feeling our way toward the holiday cheer that filled us with such dread and with the assistance of two super helpful dudes standing outside a motel, we finally came across a sign: "Amadeus Restaurant." "Yay!!!" we cheered. Then we suppressed our levity to make room for the quiet determination needed to rapidly scale the winding road leading up to the castle-like establishment. Under cover of darkness, we made the final touch-ups to our new personages. Stray hairs were tucked; bright leg-warmers were removed; last giggles were expelled.

Once we went through the doors, I could tell that Megan and I had entered a world of elegance previously unknown to us. A white-haired lady sat at a baby grand. I wondered if she had been plucked straight from the church-organ circuit just to play for this hoity-toity gathering. Several chandelier-style light fixtures hung from the ceiling. Even nature had done itself up for the occasion--a formidably large pine cone, a maple leaf, and a walnut adorned the top face of the piano, each gilded in pure, 40 carat gold spray paint.

"We're with Concepts in Community Living," Megan announced professionally to the matre' d. He showed us down a flight of stairs into what had surely once been a medieval dungeon (it was freezing). A standing pool of perms and ties had collected down there. "There are a bunch of people who aren't even here yet," Megan whispered to me, "We came at the right time. If we would have gotten here at 5:57, we would have been screwed." I shuddered at the thought.

i'm feeling very concerned about tonight

tonight is the staff holiday party. i am bringing tara. it has been an interesting day at the office, with yelling, and tensions, and now culminating in my boss drinking wine in her office next door with two of her friends. at 3pm.
my boss called me into her office to say,

"so, are you going to get a perm before the party?"

she also said,

"you have NO idea what i am getting you for christmas, ha!"

implying it has something to do with my appearance. my appearance having been a running and painful theme for weeks now.
at some point during the weekend you can expect a post with a detailed analysis of the party, hopefully featuring a guest blogger, the hilarious and friendly tara anderson.

well well well

two can play at this game, my pumpkin

my darling

my.... minion.

straw poll

who is a better blogger, me or mercedes?

(note: blogger quality is to be measured solely by number of blogs/month. other criteria--such as interestingness, cuteness, and the level at which the blogger is missed by the judges--are not permissible.)

pinkeye

i have pinkeye. but that's ok. sort of.

holy fuck

i just got my computer and it is fucking goddamned awesome.

oh great

i received the following email from a perky office lady today:

Hey all it is that time again. We have the 12+ Days of Treat Sign-Up in the kitchen. If you want to participate please sign-up for a day and bring your choice of special treat. Thanks and HO! HO! HO! 28 days until Christmas!

Amy Perkett

Concepts in Community Living

(503) 408-4083

aperkett@ccliving.com

which means of course that people will be bringing in blasted cookies, brownies, donuts etc EVERY SINGLE DAY from today until dec. 25th. today there are many cookies. soon there will be much fat. it just sucks cuz i have little self control if there is a GODDAMN PILE of cookies on my way to the bathroom.

here are two identical pictures of my mouth and nose. one is smaller than the other:


oh, and i was a drug dealer for halloween. hence the looking tough. and i had little bag of (yard) grass and (kitchen) mushrooms.

thanksgiving

so.
i'm at my dad's house with he and reality and the scared-y-cats, who are actually cats that are always very scared. of me.
so things are going ok, that weird thing is happening where my dad is limiting and controlling my food supply, and the other weird thing is happening that reality is crazy and that the two of them just have honestly the most annoying arguments you would ever believe. many hours in the car confirmed this fact, which i already knew.

but in all honesty and possible boringness, everything else is going quite well and i actually do like both of them.

i also saw my uncle, grandfather, and assorted others. including reality's parents. who still call her "susan."

tomorrow we see my very smart but somewhat spoiled neice audrey and sunday we go to san francisco to see sophia my sister, and gabe possibly if he ever calls back which of course i doubt.

MY DAD IS BUYING ME A COMPUTER. macbook. 13 inch. white. 2 gb memory. i'm paying for about $300 of it. he offered to pay for half, and i agreed, and then somehow reality and my uncle intervened, like the hands of god, and bullied him into agreeing to pay for it all. it was AMAZING! it's being shipped in the mail RIGHT NOW!!! holy shit!!!

here is a picture of me from halloween:

oh my god, her butt is so big

google has redesigned blogger, looks like.
so far changes look minor.
but i am sure that they will soon blow my mind.

today i feel:













but also:











this is my exboyfriend aaron's new band: http://www.myspace.com/evilaliencostume
they seem good but they also make me think that the knickers/panties are good.


there is a woman at the office named jeanie who actually seems very nice, even possibly funny, though my interactions with her happen about once a week and they go like this:

Jeanie: i brought donuts
Me: oh. great. trying to kill me i see
Jeanie: thought you should know! (wink)
Me: you're terrible!
etc

so it's this running thing, where she brings in donuts and i get fat. but honestly, i think she is bringing in donuts so that i (and others) get fat, and i am not joking, because she never eats a single donut but she goes around to the offices of all the women and has the same interaction that she has with me. i think she's one of those people who likes to see other women get fat.

or, she just likes giving away donuts and not eating them.

and also likes to see other women get fat.

1. i made a new website: www.rockcove.org. it is ok but it looked better before it made me do stupid stuff to get around formatting problems.
2. i am going to go visit mercury and reality tomorrow.

yo

less crabby today, thank god. though yesterday didn't go that well, i felt weird and locked myself in the bathroom for a little while to lie on the ground.

today poppy forwarded to me and some office ladies, this time including stacy (who as you know has recently had a worse relationship with poppy than usual, even) the following email:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Renee Arnold [mailto:Renee_Arnold@fsafood.com]
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 11:16 AM
To: Poppy Preston
Subject:


Poppy,

I am sending the others, but these so fit you, so I thought that you could have these first.

Love you Happy Friday



Renee




























which actually could be read as an indictment of say, me. or stacy. or whomever. and obviously this renee person thinks the email fits poppy because poppy tells horror stories about the office to renee. right? though, as far as i know i'm still in the clear.

but what do i know? nothing! eek! the grenade is obviously scary.

cross

i am cross because no one does their stupid jobs in this joint.

i can't get anything done because no one ever responds to my emails or calls to give me what i need.

and why can't these building directors take one decent picture of their presumably adorable residents or their presumably spacious and inviting buildings??

and stacy is in charge of the LEAP activity program and wants to do the fun stuff like make the newsletter (and you know how that always goes) but today she flat-out refused to call someone and tell them that they cannot have the program for free, so i had to do it. and i theoretically am supposed to NOT have to do LEAP stuff cuz that's her whole JOB. and she said the reason was that she is leaving and the program will soon be mine anyway, so she is pulling out.

but that's her only stupid responsibility at the office, while i have bazillions of projects! and she's still getting PAID! what is she getting PAID for?

additionally, other things are also annoying.








but i made a phototour:
http://www.jfrfoundation.org/Photo%20Tour.htm

oh god, stacy just came into my office on the verge of tears to explain herself. she is really an incredibly sensitive person! christ! i hope that she gets a very very friendly job after this one....

i am sad about this:









and this:

things are weird and interesting

some of this is old news to those who follow my gchat statii.

first things first, though.

yesterday=yelling catfight between poppy and stacy in front of everyone, over color copies. poppy and stacy both look to me for comfort/solidarity.

this morning, stacy sends me the following email:

Hey Megan well I had a talk with Keren ( about the poppy incident )this morning and apparently could you spread the word that I am not an unfriendly or mean person and the reason I have my door closed is because of the radio and the heater….. I am dead serious Keren asked me to ask you to spread the word until I leave… Megan I know you have experienced what I have so I know I am not crazy but I felt as if I was in trouble….

Thanks stace

as you know, keren is my boss. so apparently keren wants me to go to poppy and patience and spread good will toward stacy. which is awkward to say the least. and has already been tried.

ok.

so then also, today i had a 6-month review with my boss. i got a 6% raise which is like $1620 a year which is a laptop.

but keren identified a few areas for improvement, two of which were: appearance. what should we do about this? she asked. we can work on this together. perhaps some lipstick, and a headband. not the stretchy kind; only the hard kind. blouses and button up shirts would also be good. her elderly slightly crazy sister would be ecstatic about taking me shopping. and this is not a joke. keren is suggesting that i go shopping at the goodwill with her sister donna. which i might have to do as part of my general policy of maximizing my collection of life experiences.

another area for improvement was in my "verbal skills." which i was confused about at first because certainly i am more articulate than my officemates; also i do endeavor to sound professionalish. but it turns out that i have a "reed style" of addressing superiors or people just older than me, that involves me probing them for the information i want, contradicting them when i think they are wrong, and generally not being deferential enough. keren kindly described people who might have a problem with this as "stuffy." i'm pretty sure she's talking about this one lady at PSU whom i interrupted when she was going on and on... because this woman got annoyed at me.

in any case....

it was a funny meeting with keren and her perception of me is hilarious, though maybe accurate (ish)- which is that i am smart and effective and a good team player, but young and generally green behind the ears and having many lessons to learn. she says i have "great potential." like, as a person.

moving quickly ahead--

today i got an email from some kid from PSU that said he was interested in our study abroad program. i do not remember him, though i'm sure i talked to him for a minute or so while tabling. this is his weird email to me, followed by a perfectly normal email i had sent him:

Megan, thanks for the phone call reminding me of my application deadline. I beat you to the punch yesterday and turned the thing over to the Education Abroad office, so now you can sleep soundly knowing that I still have a semblance of a chance of partcipation in the program. Recent reflection makes me think that I alone did not receive your helpful telephone reminder. Oh, such vanity and sadness.

Well, anyhoo, have a fun day,
Wyatt

Megan Harrington wrote:
Don’t forget!

Program application deadline for the service-learning course “Global Aging and Health: Focus on Nicaragua”:

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10
Submit to the Education Abroad office.

Applications are available online at Education Abroad’s website: http://www.intl.pdx.edu/EdAbroad/Aging.htm and at the Jessie F. Richardson Foundation’s website: www.jfrfoundation.org.

Please contact me with your questions! We hope to review your application soon.

Cheers,

Megan Harrington Wilson
Jessie F. Richardson Foundation
15900 SE 82nd Drive, Clackamas, OR 97015
mharrington@jfrfoundation.org
Ph: 503.408.4754 F: 503.255.5929

i guess... maybe none of this is particularly interesting. but everyone seems so weird and crazy to me, is all i'm saying.

this picture is scary and does not entice me to shop at lenscrafters, though that is still where i will probably go to get contacts

it is scarier bigger, so you should click on it.

morning

my butt is wet and i am trying to hide it from my coworkers by walking sideways, etc.

boo

happy birthday mercedes

hilarious myspace comment from shankar:

10/26/2006 8:59 PM

Megan, do you remember the all-nighter that created this:

"...Clearly our analysis is fraught with problems. One thing that we discovered after working through these regressions is that it would have been difficult to choose a more problematic dependent variable. Data on the expectations of an atomic war was only taken in 1984, which excluded the use of most potentially relevant regressors...Furthermore, this dependent variable is not scalar and hence without logit cannot be used in this kind of analysis...Our theoretical and actual analyses were forced to evolve and adapt in many ways throughout the painful process of this experiment..."

"...We concluded that if nothing else several control variables varied strongly with our dependent variable. Our controls were sex, religious identification, and race, all of which had positive correlation coefficients. This leads us to the conclusion that expectations of atomic warfare are most common among males, religious persons, and possibly whites...

For a good time see appendix."

Miss ya,

Shankar

_____

additionally, and most importantly, I FOUND A GRAMMATICAL ERROR IN A WILLIAM SAFIRE ON LANGUAGE COLUMN, AND I AM NOT JOKING.

In all IM (initialese for "instant messaging," a phrase that speed-writers apparently find too time-consuming to spell out or have already forgotten what it stands for) as well as in much email, banality is dressed in seven-league boots and triviality is treated with urgency.

all about me

hi friends.

today was a strange day, we were out till 1am at omalleys of course and i woke up at 6:30 with cramps and a bit of a hangover, actually from wine instead of beer- i didn't drink at omalleys! but i got totally sloshed at rebecca's wine presentation at dork club!

then i couldn't sleep, what with the pain all over, so i got up and took a bath and felt sorry for myself and then i got out of the bath and opened the bathroom door and bill was there (spent the night after dorkclub) and he was holding my phone, which had been ringing, apparently underneath him on the couch, and it was my boss.

and i said, hi keren, and she said, are you going to the meeting today, and i was like wha? and she said get here as soon as you can so that you can go to this meeting with me, which i hadn't been planning on going to.

random picture to break up my narrative:













so then i was bummed because i felt like ass and didn't have time to eat or grab lunch food or dress well or anything, and i rushed around and biked to work (! second time biking to work since accident, first time was yesterday) and got here sweaty and gross and rushed off to this meeting with my boss (who is crazy) and-

she's the worst driver of all time!! and i am not joking!!!

it was like this:












and then she was swearing like crazy at all these other perfectly reasonable cars. but in any case, we had these mapquest directions that patience had printed out for us, and we were running late. and at one point we realized we were headed downtown, rather than hillsboro, where we were supposed to be going, because the mapquest directions were to PACIFIC UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, which apparently exists, rather than PACIFIC UNIVERSITY. then a number of stupid things happened, such as me admitting that i'd brought literally nothing with me, including useful things such as wallets, pens and papers, and phones. she also did not have her phone. and at this point we were so so late. and then we drove every which stupid direction and at this point we were 45 minutes late, no joke, and i started having this problem where i would burst out laughing or almost burst out laughing, like constantly, while my boss was actually in a terrible mood and not thinking anything was funny. but i was all sleep deprived and i don't know- laughy. but anyway we got to this meeting over an hour late. and then that made us an hour late to the meeting we had right after that, for which i successfully parked keren's very nice car in a parking garage, bumping into no parked cars on the way. also i forgot tampons today and have been using "alternative methods" which have proven unreliable and ineffective (grossish).

also pretty much since we've gotten back to the office, i have done literally nothing. useful.

though i would like you all at this time to revisit the website, which i think i have improved.

i haven't had

hmmm.. i wrote those three words and then poppy came to talk to me about something and then now that i'm looking back at the screen i have no idea what i had planned to not have had.

here is a sentence with the word 'flower' in it.

leave me a comment, so i know that you care.

today i have cramps

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow also comes with gas and generally bad other elements.

Beauty of Reciprocity

We’ve all heard from the time we are children” The Golden Rule “ Treat those as you want to be treated”, Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” (Jesus). “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man( Hille)” and last but not least “ What you want others to do to you, do not do to others (Confucius).”
Almost every religion , culture has this moral guideline, but do we follow it? If we believe it then why do we often fail, do we forget what you throw out is what you get at some point in time? Is there truth to this?
As we think back to our past circumstance and situations at some point in time we say “ ah hau, karma has came back to get me”! Situations arise whether it be in the workplace, loved ones, friends we often treat and talk to them in a way that we never wanted to be treated. Forgetting that what we throw out is what we get in return.
How much effort would it take to not say those hurtful and often unnecessary words. When it happens to us we often feel outraged and overcome with anger and animosity how could person do or say such a thing often forgetting that we at one time have done it to someone else and my even continue doing it.
As Martin Luther King once stated “ The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” During these difficult and complicated times in our lives where we forget the “ Golden Rule”? We can not always control what we think but we can control what we say and how we react to situations. By changing our thinking its easier for us to change our behavior. [editor's note: wha?]
British comedian, Harry Thompson said, “Be kind. Remember that everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”. Or the Ju Ju will come to bite you!












Website of the Month
www.HealthUpdates.com/h0306
For the scoop on how the right kinds of foods can help sharpen the your mind, protect you heart and vision, and cut your cancer risk and many other health updates that can help strengthen you health and well- being visit this website. Did you know that cranberry juice as well as dried cranberries can help prevent urinary tract infections. Cranberries can help reduce bacteria's ability to stick and colonize the urinary tract potentially aiding in the prevention of bladder infections.

i don't like any of these shirts

my brilliant work

2:38 pm
aha! the new jfr website is up and running, thanks to me. the whole website was done by me, entirely, except i had nothing to do with the curvey font choice, that's not my fault. it's our "look." anyway. i think the site still looks a little campy but oh well, i'm not much of a graphic designer. photo tour to come.

hacked

alarming thing. also i feel dumb/greasy/badly dressed today. and i have to go to a meeting with a bunch of strange aging experts, to represent JFR. disastrous.




he's running against tom feeney for congress! it's crazy.

gootube.

this is so weird. this is a youtube member's response to the news that google bought out youtube. this member's name is: thegermanman.

the knickers

some pictures from friday's show:






























































and the crowd goes wild

Adapting to Life's Curveballs

"We often think to ourselves life should go the way we want it. When challenges arise, why me I didn't do anything wrong! “ Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. Life just doesn't happen without our participation,” Poet Thomas La Mance states. Do our choices and decisions outweigh random misfortunes? Are there moments that we chose to ignore and fail to take?
When we feel our security is threatened, danger is present such as financial security, our personal well being and family and health problems it may seem hard to think about what we should do next. Its hard for many of us to realize that we don't have control. We begin to feel overburden with anxieties and parts of us want to give up, do we give up, and say that’s it I am done? Do we stay in that moment of hopelessness and throw ourselves a pity party and never leave? No! Discouragement destroys hope.
Sometimes we forget all of our former victories and how we overcame them. We should start to shed all of the negative thinking, it is not helpful. Our attitudes manifest themselves in our behaviors. For example if we think we are failures then we will fail, simple as that!
Our futures have not been shattered maybe our path that we were taking in life is geared to something better direction. Maybe we failed to listen to that little voice in our head and we will not make better decisions.
Think about the lessons along the way, what did we learn about ourselves? Maybe we learn that we are much stronger than we think. We are a resilient people and there is always something to learn along the way."

I am I So Thankful Month
"This month is dedicated to giving thanks and counting your blessings daily. When life has us down and we are struggling to adapt to the curve balls of what the world is throwing at us we forget to be thankful for what we do have. Many around the world are lacking the basics that we take for granted such as running water, toilets and electricity. Something that may help us keep a perspective on our own trial is to think about those who do with out. Many children and adults have lost their dignity and mobility, but the new design of dramatically reduced cost wheel chair thousands of lives are changing.
More than 100 million disabled poor people of the world must drag themselves along the ground or be carried. Their disability can trap them in a life of deep poverty and humiliation. Wheel chairs are not an option because they cost hundreds of dollars and most cannot afford it. Recently Free Wheelchair Mission and other partnerships began collecting donated wheel chairs and parts to create a unique lightweight wheel chair to give mobility to thousands around the world. The goal is to serve 16,000 or more people. One of the key engineers began to design wheel chairs because of the impact that was made by seeing a Moroccan woman crawl across a dirt road. He decided to design the least expensive wheel chair as possible and get it to as many people as possible. The chair has very few parts and is based on a normal plastic patio chair that is durable, washable and inexpensive. It can be used for adults and children by adjustment and adding a harness."


[sic].

actually

there is something to talk about now, which is that poppy just came into my office to ask me to close my door so she can't hear "wait wait don't tell me" from her desk... and she did it in the nicest way. like, really nice. and i'm supposed to go to lunch with she and patience later this week. and i guess the point is, whenever you're sure of something, assume that you're wrong, for the rest of your life.

OH. MY. GOD.

boy, have i got news for you guys!!!!


the craziest thing happened.
i got to work
and would you believe it...
i did some work
and bit my nails
and


and


i have nothing to blog about.
ok, i cried listening to "this american life" today. it was about unconditional love. i cried kind of too much to be crying at work, like tears streaming kind of a thing. thankfully, my job, as you know, is a lonely and desolate one.
soooo....
here is a picture of my job:












and of tears...:



and now i'm listening to










and it's still not that funny.



so.


If you're blue and you don't know where to go to why don't you go where fashion sits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Different types who wear a day coat pants with stripes and cutaway coat perfect fits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper
Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)


Come let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or um-ber-ellas in their mitts

lunch

lunch today:

















lunch yesterday:

birthday, etc

there will hopefully be pictures eventually to post, if i can finnagle (sp?) them out of bon's camera. the depends party was a smashing success, everyone attended and good sports were to be found around every corner.

i must divulge an embarrassing fact- which i only feel comfortable doing here due to the utterly private nature of the blogosphere- which is that i had a small absorbency problem early in the night, and a rather large absorbency problem later on in the night. and i was the only person to have this kind of problem. and those were the only two times i successfully peed into the correct side of the diaper. and that is all i will say about that.

here is a picture of a diaper that looks pretty similar to what we wore:















and here is a picture of an adult in a diaper:










but the reason i felt like posting just now was really that i was doing some more of this data entry from surveys of nicaraguan elders that i've been doing, which are all very depressing, and someone had written "desuelo" under "do you have any other problems you would like to report?"

and i looked it up, and the literal translation of "desuelo" is:
"i desolate."

and when those words popped up in the google translator, it was sad in a way i can't explain.

i'm sad

8:00am
that i seem to do best on about 10 hours of sleep, like mercedes. which would involve going to bed every night before 10 pm, ha!



















7:00pm
i was looking at this website that shows places with wireless in portland, and allows you to make comments. one person said the following about mojo's coffee den:

Wow! Great Coffee!Posted by isabella r. at 16: 0PM -0 5-, 2005

I LOVE Mojo's coffee, me it remembers to the coffee at the cafe in hometown of mine San Gimignano in Italy (South from Florence). Such charming conversation the older man has behind the counter. My computer running so fast with internet. I have now not had opportunity to attend poetry but I like to soon. In my country we also hate your president George Bush, Mojos is just like my home.

a hoot.

found a funny joke online:

A nun goes to the doctor with an attack of hipo that already lasts a month to him.
- Doctor, I have been having an attack of hipo, for a month, that does not let to me live. I do not sleep, not like, already hurts the body to me of as much involuntary compulsive movement.
- Tiéndase in the stretcher, sister, who I am going to examine says it the doctor.

It examines it and it says to him:
- Sister, you this pregnant woman!

The nun rises and leaves running the consultation with panic face. One hour later the doctor receives a call of the superiora mother of the convent:
- Doctor, what has said You to him to the sister Maria?
- Superiora mother Will see, as she had a fort attacks of hipo, I gave a scare him so that she took off to him and I suppose that will have taken off to him, no? , the doctor says.
- Yes, to the sister Maria hipo has taken off him, but the father Juan has thrown itself of the bell tower.

hoot! hoot! that's a hoot.

actually, wait, i was putting it up because it's a google "translate this page" creation and it sounds funny. of course my favorite part is, "Sister, you this pregnant woman!"
but i just got the joke. ha.
also, i just lost the game. and if you read this later you lose too. oh. except you eastcoasters don't know about the game? or do you? can't quite remember. let me know, i'll clue you in if you don't and you'll be so.... grateful.

oh god no

aerry is a very nice woman at work whose boyfriend is in a very, very bad band.

they are called 'unpopular club.'

their highlighted song is 'justin case'

and their album cover looks like this:










and aerry sent me their music because i told her i was in a band, and she said, "tell me what you think!"

what to say? what to say?

"i hate them."

"the fall"

so this looks similar to my x-ray, except that in mine the broken off part is more underneath the main part. also the main part is longer and the broken off part shorter.






this is a baby that broke his/her clavicle too!













this is someone's drawing of my broken clavicle.

and this is someone's drawing of my shoulder separation (my theory is that my shoulder has "unseparated" now because the pain lessened so much, so dramatically, and also because my shoulder stopped looking so grossly sunken.)


this is the weirdest of all. i didn't see anyone around at the time (not surprising, since i was flying through the air at break-clavicle speed) but someone was there and they got a picture of my fall.

news from clackamas

8: 30 am. poppy, who is suddenly very nice to me, sent me and four other ladies (cruelly omitting stacy, who is still her enemy) this link

1:15 pm. incredibly irritable. no particular cause detected. i wish there were people around so i could snap at them. no, not really.

1:17 pm. i just realized i'm premenstrual. hilarious. feeling relieved.








1:22 pm. image searched "premenstrual" on google and i was going to post the first image that came up, but it was kind of alarming (as were several others). so i chose this one:



















3:10 pm. poppy sent another email to me and some ladies with the following image plus about 25 more. i was going to upload several but it takes a million years, and you know... i'm at work. i don't do that kind of thing.










at the end of the email, confusingly, poppy wrote:

AND REMEMBER:

Good friends are like stars.
You don't always see them, but you always know they are there.

that's true.